speaking

The Internet as Gold Rush

Consider this:

• As the Internet connects more and more people together, faster and faster, turbulent and unpredictable phenomena begin to manifest. It is a law of physics.
• More turbulence requires more corrective management practices which, in turn, take more and more of our time.
• We can be reached by cell phone, voice mail, email, fax, snail mail, anywhere, anytime, all the time.
• We feel cornered.
• Fear is driving behaviour.
• We turn to "experts" to predict the future for us so we can anticipate whatever is likely to happen.
• A fundamental law of mathematics (Turing's Halting Problem) states that the detailed behaviour of any complex system is unknowable "in principle", which means that those experts who claim to know are lying.
• There are no experts, and we feel frightened because it is anyone's guess.

The Premise

Did you know that the most successful people who participated in the gold rushes of the last century were those who made and sold pickaxe handles?

Today, when asked about their competence level with the Internet compared to that of the average person, most people, even those involved professionally with the Internet, say that they are behind the average.

Can everyone be behind everyone else?

If you could handle the turbulence only a few percentage points better than your competitors, would you have a better chance of making it before they did?

In fact, what are your chances of making it at all in this brave new world of speed and connectivity without adding new tools to your kit for dealing with:

• Unpredictability
• Ambiguity
• Discontinuity
• Churn
• Data overload

The speed with which an organization can make sense of this new world will be the difference that makes the difference.

Hard, technical issues, compared to organizational and social issues, are cut and dried. The hard is easy ... it is the soft that is hard.

The talk

This session considers the Internet from a number of perspectives.

• The first is the perspective of a turbulent system in which we find ourselves embedded as a culture.

We sense that this phenomenon is important and, out of a need to control the effects, we attempt to describe and predict it, even as we experience its effects on us, often fruitlessly.

• The second perspective is one of short-term business opportunities that arise from this turbulence. These opportunities vary according to technical sophistication, current business focus, and the level of fear that you or your clients experience.

Useful techniques and approaches are offered.

• The third perspective is one of a very long range, speculative nature, of the order of tens of decades, when social effects will have become apparent and embedded as common behaviours.

The emphasis here is on developing a new set of tools, both quantitative and mental, discontinuous and ambiguous, in anticipation of the future.

If the Internet is likened to a Gold Rush, then this session will offer ways for you to draw your own treasure map.

The Take-Aways

• You will receive a critical reference text that will put you on the path.
• You will learn:
  • the 'law of the sandpile', and how it can help
  • three tools for minimizing ambiguity
  • four tools for handling discomfort
  • five tools for overcoming data overload and tunnel vision
• You will be offered tools to prospect for gold where others will see only dirt.

AND you will have a great time!

About the Speaker

Cliff Saunders is a renowned speaker, facilitator, teacher, author and consultant to Fortune 500 corporations worldwide.

He holds a BSc in Engineering, a MSc in Applied Psychology, and a Ph.D in Cybernetics.

His life's work has been dedicated to helping large organizations solve messy, complex, intractable problems.

Today, he focuses on helping people feel and function better in their every day personal and professional lives.

For more information on this or other topics, or to book Dr. Saunders to speak, facilitate or teach for your organization in this or other areas of expertise, please contact us.